№ 00

Nata
Orlo.

The painter behind every Flying Frog cover. She listens to a coffee's story and answers it with colour — by hand, in oil and gouache. A share of every bag sold returns to the artist.

Chapter — Life

A late start,
on purpose.

Nata was born in Ukraine. Her family was built in Czechoslovakia and is rooted in Poland — a childhood spent between languages, borders and the small, careful acts of a family remaking itself in a new country.

She wanted to paint from the beginning. She was told, quietly and often, that it was not a life. She listened. She built a career instead, raised a family, kept the brushes in a drawer.

She returned to painting after she retired — not as a hobby, but as the work she had always meant to do. In the years since, her practice has become full-time, exhibited and collected. She now lives and works between Sofia and Amsterdam.

Her paintings are unabashedly optimistic. They are made in the belief that a picture can carry a little of the world's brightness back to the person looking at it.

Chapter — Practice

How the covers
get made.

Listening first: Every commission begins with the story — a place, a person, a coffee. She reads it, sits with it, and only then picks up the brush.
Colour as answer: Her palette is warm and unafraid. Orange, ochre, olive and copper recur — the colours of the countries she has lived in.
Figures and frogs: Small characters appear across the work — sometimes a woman, sometimes a moon, often a frog. They carry the story from one painting to the next.
Optimism as method: She calls her practice a study in optimism. The paintings are not naïve; they are chosen — small arguments for looking up.

Chapter — The Agreement

Human made,
human paid.

Every cover is painted by Nata's hand in oil and gouache. There is no generative tool, no stock image, no shortcut. The work is slow, deliberate and entirely hers.

We do not license the art from her — we share it. A portion of every bag sold goes directly back to the studio. The painting is not decoration; it is collaboration, and the collaborator is paid.